Next up in our unSTRAIGHTening Lesbian series is poet/theorist/Radical Feminist Adrienne Rich.

Adrienne Rich or ACR as Sylvia Plath referred to her, made her way to "lesbian"
STRAIGHTBIANISM via the same route most Radical Feminists did/do;
unexpressed voluminous anger for her own poor life choices she readily
blamed the men in her life for (father/husband) and collective man
(patriarchy). Rich said of her marriage:

"I married in part because I knew no better way to disconnect from my first family," she says. "I wanted what I saw as a full woman's life, whatever was possible."

Rich marries hoping to escape familial confines/duties only to find herself unhappily in the same trapped place, only worse; with children.

"I wanted, then, more than anything, the one thing of which there was never enough: time to think, time to write."

Rich's dishonestly in the marriage lead to both her and her husband having affairs:

Shortly thereafter, her husband Alfred Conrad committed suicide:

Apparently she was such a hotty ALL the men in NY wanted a piece of her pie! Umm sure, okay!

After
cheating on her husband with both men and women, once her hubby was out
of the way/dead, Rich embarked through Radical Feminism, on a mission
to remove Lesbian from those gross, vile, dykey/mannish/wannabe
men/act like men/think like men Lezzies SHE perceived actual Lesbians to
be/look like and give Lesbian an air of upper middle class
academic redressing, making Lesbian more appealing/palatable and
acceptable to greater Feminist groups/women.

Like Radical Feminists in Rich's day and RadFems now, Rich desperately needed the IDEA of Lesbian to both vent her anger and (mistakenly) use as a means to remove herself from (in her mind) Heterosexuality/Heterocentric confines rendering her helpless/afraid/weak and ineffectual. As a Heterosexual woman, Rich could only access Lesbian through lying:

I will show shortly in Rich's piece de resistance that Rich (unlike some STRAIGHTBIANS), selfishly planned and executed her lies.

It
is precisely codswallop like this that fully seals ANY question (were
you to have any) of Rich's Heterosexuality. Radical Feminists like Rich
tell themselves collective man enforces Heterosexual female
grooming/dress etc (when actually it is Heterosexual females who both
desire/enforce beauty standards) yet cannot explain why Lesbians en
masse do not fall prey to the same Heterocentric grooming standards.

Lesbians
have always existed and have never required validation for our
existence. Women, particularly damaged Radical Feminists like Rich spend
their lives/careers seeking some sort of warped validation and blame
men for not GIVING it to them!

Rich often talks out of both sides of her mouth; on one side she claims her "erotic"
feelings for women have been stifled via Patriarchy and on the other
side she claims sexual feelings between women are not necessary for
qualifying them as Lesbian! Rich ignores or doesnt bother to notice most
Lesbians do not have the luxury of a closet, most Dykes are visibly
Lesbian. Lesbian visibility shines for some Lesbians physically and
mentally and other Lesbians less physically and more mentally. Either
way, Dyke thought processes alone peg us for Lesbian, as any Lesbian can
attest to since the advent of the internet. Even online with a
genderless name and no image of ourselves, we are often assumed/believed
by Hets (usually Het women) to be men!

In Diversity and Variability in Women’s Sexual Identities STRAIGHTBIAN Carla Rappaport Golden said of Rich's lesbian:

Lesbian
was problematic for Rich precisely because of the ugly depraved dykey
sexually perverted masculinist ideas held by Hetero
society/Heterosexuals like Adrienne Rich herself. But Adrienne Rich
desperately needed Lesbian because it encompassed (to her) anti
maleness, what she didnt need was the alienating baggage attached to
Lesbian. So Rich tried to simultaneously redefine Lesbian for
Heterosexual Feminist inclusion while distancing the debauchery attached
to Lesbian, thus Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence was born.

This
quote not only sets the stage for the rest of Rich's essay, it IS the
stage Rich starred for the rest of her life! A Heterosexual privileged
life whereby Rich and Radical Feminists like her, chanted to themselves
and in Radical Feminist groups like an incantation; I'm a lesbian!
And dont think for a minute Lesbians missed the degrading walls Doris
Lessing sandwiched Lesbian in this passage! This was Rich's fear,
without a man, her only choices were bitterness, spinsterhood or Lesbian. Rich CHOSE lesbian,
not actual Lesbianism, but a Hetsplained version she could somewhat
live with. Like Lessing's Anna, Rich was too weak to forge a
relationship with a man where SHE was willing to or capable of, living
her new found consciousness. Moving on:

Rich believed that Lesbian scholarship was forced into
hiding by a patriarchal driven Compulsory Heterosexuality that even mid
range Feminism enforced. Rich failed to understand that Lesbian
erudition wasnt (isnt) quashed or silenced by patriarchy, it wasnt
(isnt) understood by Heterosexuals, particularly Het women! Rich feared
losing academic clout by choosing Lesbian as her modus vivendi and through RadFem speak tried to make HER brand of lesbian acceptable to greater Feminism.

Rich assumes Homophobia alone inhabited Feminists (Het women) from trying to coral Het women toward a political lesbianism via feminist theory and why lesbian art/literature
etc remained rare. Rich failed to see how her own warped man hating
RadFem agenda was responsible for biological Lesbian invisibility in the
arts and elsewhere than was/is Homophobia, because she blinded herself
of our existence.

Further in the essay Rich says:

Rich
brings up Lesbians being closeted in the workplace but the exact
experiences she uses to make her points are the experiences Heterosexual
women (like her), claiming to be Lesbians (like her) had with the
luxury of being closeted! Most Dykes NEVER have that luxury and most
Dykes even if they did would NOT put some fucking job over their entire
lives! The only Homophobe here is Adrienne Rich!

Because
Rich herself (a Heterosexual woman) didnt feel or experience blatant
Homophobia (why would she?) she ignorantly theorised compulsory
heterosexuality was to blame for Feminist silence about Lesbians/Lesbian
issues, including the reason Feminists wouldnt platform Lesbianism as a
possible choice against patriarchy/men! Rich claims non Radical
Feminists were in collusion WITH patriarchy! Non Radical Feminists,
according to Rich, helped provide patriarchy with pussy, pay and
passion!

Rich found the term Lesbian limiting because Lesbian didnt include STRAIGHT women like her and because Rich didnt like the psycho-logical definitions
defining Lesbian or the societal connotations colouring Lesbian by Het
society. By expanding Lesbian to include all female relationship types,
not simply "genital" as Rich crudely puts it, Lesbian wouldnt be so foul
an idea, for women or society. Rich fails to acknowledge the LIMITS,
limits based on HER HETEROSEXUALLY driven assumptions about biological
Lesbians, that real Lesbianism isnt defined by pussy licking or KFC
pussy (finger licking good). Lesbian was crude, vulgar, plebian not
because it was/is, BUT because it was based on Adrienne Rich's own sick
fucked up homophobic warped fucking views of Lesbian!

Being
a Lesbian has fuck all to do with taboos or rejecting Heterosexuality,
it has ONLY to do with being born physiologically Lesbian! Lesbians
arent saying no to patriarchy, patriarchy doesnt factor (collectively)
anywhere into a Lesbian's life. Lesbian past, present and future
grew/grow/will grow up without any/little knowledge of Lesbians;
fortunately abilities innate to our survival ensure we find each other
and are capable of survival even if we dont. The ONLY destroyers of
Lesbian, records or histories are Radical Feminists like Adrienne Rich!
What has been recorded as "lesbian" experiences/narratives etc, are instead the experiences/narratives etc of STRAIGHTBIANS like ACR!

In
other words, Adrienne Rich and Radical Feminism itself are NOT LESBIAN!
Bizarrely in this strange (sick) passage Rich twice brings up/equates a
child/mother being turned on during infant feeding. I refuse to think
past Rich's statement here because to do so is just toooooo fucking SICK
and it most certainly is NOT Lesbian!

Precisely
because of STRAIGHTBIANS like Adrienne Rich, Lesbians/Lesbian youth
flounder and flail trying to find ourselves in the world. Thanks to the
likes of Rich and her warped RadFem ilk, most of the signs and symbols
labeled Lesbian are false. They point us right back to female
Heterosexual mindset and body that paints us into a corner of dysphoria,
reinforcing Lesbian confusion and resulting in a lesbian community made up of Heterosexual women where Lesbians STILL do not exist.

Adrienne
Rich discovered Lesbian in the same way Christopher Columbus discovered
America, she ignored those already living here and those she couldnt
ignore she kindly smothered in blankets of smallpox.

she equates the neurotic desire to return to the breast/the mother, hiding from the big bad world, with lesbianism.for heterosexual women, loving other women is loving the mother (not the other) through them, the symbiotic undifferentiable coenesthetic mother they were alienated from via becoming individuals that grew up, by tracing/replicating the mother and maternity as feminine essence throughout all women.

this entails asexuality as sexuality requires being the object in someone else's gaze which is HORRIFYING to these women. DEVASTATING. sexual games of beautification and flirtation and play are precarious, other, 'unnatural' and threatening and equated with rape and therefore men must be responsible for it somehow